Spirit of game broken by Hearts wingers in shoot-out (5)
I believe the answer is:
ghost
'spirit' is the definition.
(spirit can mean a ghost)
'of game broken by hearts wingers in shoot-out' is the wordplay.
'of' becomes 'o''.
'game broken by hearts' becomes 'gh' (I can't explain this - if you can you should give a lot more credence to this answer).
'wingers in' suggests removing the centre (only letters on the 'wings' of the word).
'out' means one lot of letters goes inside another.
'shoot' with its middle removed is 'st'.
'gh'+'st'='ghst'
'o' going within 'ghst' is 'GHOST'.
Can you help me to learn more?
(Other definitions for ghost that I've seen before include "Spook, spectre" , "Author, secretly" , "Spirit of the dead" , "give it up" , "insubstantial presence" .)